The Humble Choice lineup for March is officially live. If you’re looking for a new selection of games to add to your Steam library, this month’s drop is led by Tempest Rising, Chants of Sennaar, Sworn, alongside five more games.

For just $14.99 when you sign up for a Humble Choice membership, you can add all of these games to your PC library. On top of that, you get a bonus month for free of IGN Plus. It’s a pretty sweet deal. Head to the link below to sign up, and further down you can see this month’s full lineup. Keep in mind this selection of games only lasts for the month, so be quick to make a move on it if they interest you.

Humble Choice March 2026 Game Lineup

Apple has refreshed its most popular laptop: the 2026 MacBook Air comes with an M5 chip, double the storage (512GB), and “improved wireless connectivity.” The M5 chip sports a faster CPU and GPU, making it more capable of handling tasks like video editing and AI. The extra storage ought to appeal to anyone running out of space on their current machine, and it can be upgraded to up to 4TB. It starts at $1099 (at Best Buy it comes with a free $50 gift card) and is available for preorder now. It’s out March 11.

Preoder MacBook Air with M5 Chip (2026)

If you played the Marathon server slam, you might have found Bungie’s extraction shooter a challenging experience. It’s designed to be a “dangerous climb,” as the developer behind Halo and Destiny calls it, but Marathon’s difficulty curve can be overcome.

Part of the challenge comes from the very nature of Marathon as an extraction shooter. If you die, you lose all your gear. And not just what you looted while out on the battlefield, but what you brought in. And given how easy it is to die in Marathon, at least as it was in the Server Slam when players were just getting started, it could feel like a brutally punishing video game.

Could people bounce off Marathon because of this? Could some find its steep learning curve too hard of a climb and seek fun elsewhere? Might the Server Slam have separated the wheat from the chaff, leaving Marathon’s actual launch tomorrow, March 5, with a loyal, hardcore fanbase, but few casuals to swell its playerbase? (Check out our guide to when Marathon unlocks in your timezone to find out the exact release times.)

Bungie offered some words of reassurance to players in its latest blog post, and as a Marathon Server Slam player who struggled for motivation at times after yet another crushing failed extraction, I found comfort in them.

While pointing to Marathon’s seasonal model, and how all players will start each season fresh after a sweeping progression wipe, Bungie said everyone will find themselves under “the constant threat of death in a world more lethal and powerful than you are.”

From there, the idea is to improve your base stats and gain access to better items in the Armory by completing contracts and progressing your faction upgrades. In this way, Marathon isn’t just about extracting with better loot. You need to play the long game and think of the bigger picture. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, so to speak.

“Over the course of the season, you’ll complete contracts and progress your faction upgrades, granting you access to stronger base stats and better wares in the Armory,” Bungie explained. “It’s not just about what you loot, it’s about raising your power floor and the options available to you. Over time, recovering from a bad loss will get easier, and crafting your ideal build will be more accessible.

“As you master survival and grow your available resource pool, you’ll be able to take on increasingly challenging contracts, zones, and enemy Runners. Climb the Ranked ladder, prep for high-stakes Cryo Archive runs, and secure the most lucrative loot and prestigious rewards of the season.

“Then as the season comes to a close and the feeling of ‘$@%& it let’s ball’ settles in, roll with your best loot knowing a fresh start for everyone, with more to discover and a new climb to master, is just around the corner.”

I’ve seen plenty of debate about Marathon’s difficulty curve in the wake of the Server Slam, with some suggesting the game could do with a balance tweak here and there. The enemy AI feels particularly powerful, so one wrong turn can end your run in the blink of an eye. Some say this will become less of a problem as players bring more powerful gear and items into the fray. Others think Bungie needs to make ammo more readily available to cope with the challenge (you run out of ammo a lot in this game). And I haven’t even mentioned other enemy human players, who are, usually, even harder than the AI.

"It doesn't surprise me that some people quit the game after one hour because to understand it you need at least 4-5 hours to know what each thing does, and the UI doesn't help at," said one player who called on Bungie to add a tutorial.

Bungie has acknowledged player debates about all this, including the ultra fast TTK. It will be interesting to see if Marathon launches with a balance pass. Until then, perhaps we can take solace in the fact that all players are in the same boat. We can all suffer Marathon together.

We’ve got plenty more on Marathon, including one Bungie developer’s commitment to “fontslop.” Check out IGN's Marathon review so far to find out what we think.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Apple has taken the wraps off a brand new entry to its MacBook line of laptops: the MacBook Neo. It will come in four vibrant colors, feature a 13-inch display, and be driven by an A18 Pro chip, the same that powers the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max. Best of all, it'll be cheap: It starts at $599 (or $499 for those with education discounts).

The price and the fact that this thing uses a smartphone chip instead of a laptop- and- desktop-class M-series Apple silicon chip are the obvious headliners, putting the laptop in competition with budget Windows machines and Chromebooks. But make no mistake: While this won't go toe-to-toe with the finest gaming laptops, the A18 is no slouch. Just looking at basic Geekbench scores, the A18 Pro in an iPhone 16 Pro put up single-core performance that’s within striking distance of an M4 MacBook Air, and outdid the M1 MacBook Air in multicore scores.

Apple says the Neo will be "up to 50 percent faster for everyday tasks like web browsing and up to 3x faster when running on-device AI workloads like applying advanced effects to photos compared to the bestselling PC with the latest shipping Intel Core Ultra 5." It comes with either 256GB or 512GB of storage, 8GB of RAM (with Apple Intelligence support, to boot), and a 36.5-watt-hour battery that Apple says is good for up to 16 hours of use at a go. The laptop comes with a 20W USB-C power adapter and USB-C charging cable (unless you're in the UK or EU, where the adapter is not included).

The Neo will weigh 2.7 pounds and come in a 0.50-inch thick aluminum chassis – that's a touch thicker than the 0.44-inch-thick MacBook Air – with four colors that Apple is calling Blush (pink), Citrus (yellow/green), Indigo (blue), and Silver (uh, silver). It won't have the MagSafe charging port from other MacBooks, but will feature two USB-C ports (one USB 3 and the other USB 2) for both charging and data – good to see Apple not repeating the single-port mistake it made with the 12-inch MacBook – leaving one for power and one open for accessories. It'll have a color-matched Magic Keyboard, but you'll need to upgrade if you want Touch ID, as that's not available in the base model. Below the keyboard, a Magic Trackpad, which means multi-touch and gesture support.

The retina display will lack the notch from other MacBooks, meaning a thicker bezel, and will feature a 2408x1506 resolution and 500-nit brightness. In the top of the bezel, a 1080p webcam, and on the side of the machine, a headphone jack and dual side-firing speakers with Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos support. And, via the rear USB-C port, the laptop can drive an external 4K display at 60Hz.

Apart from the A18 Pro, which has a 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine for AI tasks, the MacBook Neo features Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 6 compatibility. The MacBook Neo is in preorder on Apple's website now, and will be available to purchase for $599 and up and starting March 11.

Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom's Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn't be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.

Cillian Murphy remains keen to make another movie in the 28 Days Later franchise, despite its latest entry ending up as a box office bomb.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, in which Murphy only has a cameo, launched in January — just seven months after last year's 28 Years Later. Series creator Danny Boyle planned the two movies as the beginning of a fresh trilogy for the franchise, though its financial performance has left its future somewhat unclear.

While last year's 28 Years Later performed well in theaters, The Bone Temple did not. Despite positive reviews, it failed to earn back its $63 million production budget, let alone the further costs spent on its marketing.

Will the series' last film still be made? Murphy himself has previously stated that it would only be greenlit if the second was successful, though it was reported in December last year that Sony Pictures had given the third entry a green light. Since then, nothing has been said — but in a new interview with The Times, the actor struck a more upbeat tone.

"Hope so!" Murphy said, when asked for an update on the movie, which is believed to still be in the planning stages. "I'm ready anyway," he concluded.

Cillian starred in the original 28 Days Later back in 2003, though did not return for its 2007 sequel 28 Weeks Later, or last year's follow-up 28 Years Later. Fans of the franchise finally caught a glimpse of him once again at the end of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, reintroducing him to the series' story in advance of a planned starring role in its sixth entry.

Next up for Murphy is this week's return of Peaky Blinders, this time on the big screen, in Netflix movie Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. Murphy will not, however, be taking on the role of Voldemort in HBO's Harry Potter TV series — despite various rumors to the contrary. "I'm categorically not," Murphy told The Times.

Image credit: Jacob King/PA Images via Getty Images.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

RPGs don't always require compelling stories or innovative trappings to be fun. Sometimes, all you want or want are a few engaging systems, some brought colors, and a delightful loop of grinding, exploration, and reward. Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection seems to deliver all that in spades based on what I’ve played so far, matching a fairly innocuous, almost infantile narrative with well-tuned mechanics to create something thoroughly enjoyable in the early going.

The three Star Force games included in this collection don't even try to hide the influence Pokemon clearly had on their design. All three are split into multiple versions clearly inspired by ye olde Blue and Red. A total of seven variants exist across the trilogy, and they're all represented well here, with some content unique to each.

The Star Force games share a lot of DNA with the earlier Battle Network titles while reflecting the mid-2000s hardware migration from Game Boy Advance to Nintendo DS. Capcom has solved most of the two-screen play issues fairly elegantly, miniaturizing the second screen to an upper corner and allowing the player to instantly bring it full-screen with a trigger hold. This works remarkably well. Environments have been colorfully and crisply translated from the low-resolution DS screen. The designers wisely maintained a close to 4:3 form factor, so graphics don't display any appreciable stretching or distortion. The Wave World dungeons seamlessly overlap the human world. The vibe and feel of all three optimistic meladramas appears to be lovingly preserved.

Combat, though, is the gravity that holds Star Force Collection on its winning trajectory. Fundamentally, all these games are combat-centric action-RPGs. Though cards, abilities, and other nuances vary, the 3x5 battle grid where you take on enemies is the most fleshed-out part of the the Star Force trilogy, a formula perfected all the way back on the GBA with the Battle Network games. You can rig clever card combos, juggle timing counters, sprint forward for melee attacks, nimbly dodge attacks, and snipe with your P-shooter. It's a sprightly, light action-RPG combat system that rewards focus but is also fairly forgiving of miscalculation, and the battles are quick enough you likely won't mind the random encounters.

Capcom did a good job updating these titles for the modern player, but for my tastes are less successful at contextualizing their place in the Mega Man pantheon. Some effort was put into visual or audio museums, but there's nothing here comparable to, say Digital Eclipse's Gold Master series, where the history and legacy of each game is celebrated by curated timelines or original documentaries. The historic features stack up poorly even next to the original Mega Man Legacy Collection, which allowed players to pop directly into certain gameplay moments directly from museum boss art. No such luck here.

As for the plot... well, that's probably not really why you're here. Plucky hero, quirky friends, buddy aliens made of electromagnetic energy, and maybe a dark conspiracy or two. You know, the usual stuff. It carries the collection and the combat forward, and for these games, that's enough.

Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection doesn't seem poised to shake up the world, but it doesn't really have to, nor did it likely set out to. It's appropriate for anyone who remembers whittling away hours on their GBA playing Battle Network or their DS playing Star Force. It’s also a perfect pastime for eleven-year-olds (or kids at heart) who love deck building, combo breaking, and diving into complementary, overlapping gameplay systems. Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection is, based on my time with it, shaping up to be a real winner.

Jared Petty does all kinds of things with video games. When he’s not marketing with Other Ocean or writing for IGN, he’s creating new episodes of The Top 100 Games Podcast. Find him on Instagram, Threads, and BlueSky as @pettycommajared.

Resident Evil: Requiem is the first in the horror franchise to be released solely for current-generation consoles, but what really makes it special is the engine that runs it. The RE Engine was built initially for Resident Evil 7, and Capcom has since used it to power everything from Monster Hunter: Wilds to Exoprimal – remember that one?

But while the engine has had issues in open-world games, it’s still incredible for the franchise it was created for. As a result, Resident Evil Requiem looks exquisite on the PS5, and runs smoothly no matter which version of the platform you’re using.

I was particularly interested to see how the first Resident Evil game designed first and foremost for the current generation of consoles would perform across all its platforms, but I only got pre-release code for PS5 and PC. So while I’ll be looking at the Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch 2 after launch, I went ahead and dove into the PS5 and PC versions to see how they compare.

The Display Modes

While it’s become the norm for console games to have multiple display modes that prioritize quality or frame rate, the base PS5 only has one mode. That will get you a 4K image upscaled from roughly 1080p, but running at an incredibly stable 60 fps. Capcom probably could have scaled the game down a bit more to add a high frame rate mode to the basic PS5, but it really does strike a nice balance between resolution and performance.

The PS5 Pro is a little more flexible. There are two display modes here, revolving entirely around ray tracing, or the lack thereof. Without ray tracing, the PS5 Pro looks very similar to the base PS5 version of the game, but it does appear to be upscaling from a higher resolution – 1300p from my count.

Instead of changing too much about the visual quality, the ‘RT off’ mode instead focuses on delivering a high frame rate, targeting up to 120 fps – though it didn’t quite reach that mark in my testing.

The ray tracing preset takes the place of a “prefer quality” type of preset in Resident Evil Requiem on the PS5 Pro. The underlying quality settings and resolution don’t seem to change too much here, but ray tracing is turned on, which enhances the lighting, reflections and shadows. And while early ray tracing modes on the PS5 dropped performance down to 30 fps, Resident Evil Requiem still targets 60 fps with the fancy lighting enabled.

What’s particularly impressive about this mode, though, is how close it looks to the PC version with ray tracing set to “high”. While a gaming PC with a high-end GPU will get better performance with these quality settings, it’s still awesome that a console can deliver this level of visual fidelity while still hitting a solid 60 fps.

Performance

More than anything, it looks like Resident Evil Requiem is continuing the trend of 60 fps gaming being the floor. Even on the base PS5, the game doesn’t drop below 60, and the PS5 Pro takes those quality settings and pushes for even higher performance.

With the non-ray tracing preset on PS5 Pro, Capcom is targeting high-refresh displays, with performance hovering between 99 and 110 fps during the opening scene here. There are some quality differences between this version and what’s running on the base PS5, but they’re extremely minor, and mostly come down to the slightly lower resolution.

The minor differences in presentation here make it even more impressive that Capcom was able to raise the frame rate by so much. In the worst case scenario, where the PS5 Pro drops under 100 fps, it’s still getting around a 40% boost to frame rate.

The ray tracing preset drops the frame rate back down to 60, but it looks much better, especially in darker scenes. You can debate all day long whether or not 60 fps is enough, but with how important lighting is in Requiem, having that extra fidelity is totally worth the tradeoff – especially if you don’t have a display that can actually output a higher frame rate.

On PC I tested the game with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080, with ray tracing set to high, along with graphics quality and lighting quality also set to the high preset. This isn’t fully maxed out, but with DLSS set to ‘Performance’ it looks remarkably similar to the PS5 Pro’s ray tracing preset.

With the RTX 5080, which is admittedly more expensive than the PS5 Pro by itself, Requiem runs at around 110-120 fps at 4K, without frame generation. However, there are some scenes with a lot of NPCs, like this street scene that we’re using for testing, where performance can drop down to around 95-100 fps, but that’s still more than enough.

Requiem also supports path tracing on PC, which looks incredible, but will absolutely gut your performance. In the same scene, the frame rate dropped down to 55 fps. That’s not great, but that tends to happen when you take ray tracing and turn it up to 11. I was also able to turn on frame generation, which saw the frame rate shoot all the way up to around 200 fps – more than my capture card can actually capture. Frame generation does add extra latency, but it wasn’t enough to actually be noticeable when playing the game.

Image Quality

No matter how you’re playing Resident Evil Requiem, it looks incredible, even when it’s showing you pretty gnarly scenes.

Right at the beginning of the game, after you get out of some cinematics, you’ll find yourself on a city street. What’s surprising is that, at least on PC, this was one of the most demanding sections of the game that I’ve played through so far, likely due to the NPCs walking along the street, on top of the rain creating a ton of reflective surfaces.

However, due to the somewhat random assortment of NPCs that appear here, it’s easiest to look at this cinematic that triggers once Grace gets to a crime scene. Just pausing at the beginning of the scene and zooming in on her jacket, you can tell the difference in resolution between the base PS5 and PS5 Pro – it’s subtle, but it’s there.

What’s less subtle, though, is the differences ray tracing makes to the same scene. Swapping to this mode on the PS5 Pro, and the button is a little reflective, which gives it much more depth. Then, zooming out a bit, you can see a lot more depth and shadow in Grace’s hair. Then, if you zoom in behind her, you can see that on the ray tracing mode, the cop car in the scene projects its emergency light on the subway’s support beam – where it just looks like flat metal on the base PS5.

This scene also illustrates how close the PS5 Pro is to the PC version when it comes to image quality. The shadows are a bit more pronounced on the PC version, which gives some more depth to Grace’s character model, but the differences are minor.

Fast forward a little bit, though, and you can see one of the biggest differences between ray tracing and path tracing. Once the cop lifts the tarp to let Grace into the crime scene, most versions of the game show the alley behind it as dark, losing a lot of detail. Turn on path tracing, though, and the light naturally illuminates what’s on the other side of the tarp. Again, a pretty minor detail in the grand scheme of things, but these things add up over time.

Ray tracing really shines in Requiem’s darker scenes with a lot of reflective surfaces. Luckily, you also spend much of the first hour of the game in a dark, rainy city. A little later on, you gain control of Leon, where there’s a zombie outbreak of sorts in the city.

In this scene there’s virtually no difference between the PS5 and the PS5 Pro beyond frame rate, so I’m just going to focus on the two performance modes on the PS5 Pro. Without ray tracing, the scene looks alright, but a lot of the reflections in the various puddles are a bit muddy, with vague shapes of light showing up. That’s a side-effect of using screen space reflections, which are a lot less precise than ray tracing.

With RT enabled, though, you can make out the shapes of the street lights in the puddles, and Leon’s leather jacket also reflects light, which makes it look like, well, a leather jacket.

The PC version, of course, takes it to another level. You can zoom in on the hotel sign here, and the details on the hotel wall are much more clear, thanks to improved global illumination. That’s something that you’d have to zoom in a bunch to actually see, but it’s a nice detail regardless.

Then, if you enable path tracing, the reflections are especially enhanced here. Just look at this van, with regular old ray tracing, you can make out some small reflections of lights. But with path tracing, you can see the full reflection of the street signal behind it, while also making the rear view window actually look like a transparent glass panel. It looks incredible.

The care center also shows huge gaps between the ray traced and the non-ray traced versions of the game. When you get to this spooky looking hallway, with its flickering lights, look at how the lighting behaves. With the non-RT mode, the light cuts off almost like it hits a hard boundary. However, with ray tracing, the ray traced global illumination takes the light from the lamp at the end of the corridor and makes it extend much more naturally down the hallway, tapering off the further away it gets from the source.

You can also see along the edges, where the pictures on the wall are in complete darkness just a few feet into the hallway, where the light bounces more naturally when ray tracing is enabled. It’s a small touch, but it really does do a lot to make the game a bit more atmospheric.

Though, to be fair, even without ray tracing, I was much more worried about what was lurking around the next corner than I was about slightly unrealistic lighting.

At the end of the day, the same age-old advice applies to Resident Evil Requiem. If you have a high refresh display and you like the extra visual smoothness that comes from a high frame rate, turn ray tracing off if you have a PS5 Pro. The game looks great regardless, and going up to 100-ish fps will make a huge difference when you’re panicking.

But if you don’t have a high-refresh display, or if you just like having your games look as good as possible, go ahead and turn ray tracing on. Yeah, you’ll take a hit to performance, but it still gets a solid 60 fps on PS5 Pro and it looks incredible.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

A new report has revealed that both Ghost of Yotei and Saros will remain exclusive to PlayStation 5 as Sony begins to pull back from PC.

Bloomberg said that while Sony will continue to release online games on PC, single-player games will now remain console exclusive, marking a significant strategy shift. Sony had a strategy of releasing its PlayStation games on PC some time after they hit console. This new policy marks a return to console exclusivity at a time when console rival Microsoft is all-in on multiplatform.

So, expect to see fighting game Marvel Tokon on PC as well as PS5, and of course Bungie’s extraction shooter Marathon remains a multiplatform release. Meanwhile,the Sony-published but externally developed Death Stranding 2 and Kena: Scars of Kosmora will launch on PC. But plans to release Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Yotei were recently scrapped, Bloomberg said.

Bloomberg suggested poor recent sales of PlayStation games on PC and the risk to the PlayStation brand, as well as a potential impact on PS5 and maybe even PS6 sales, were to blame for the policy shift. Meanwhile, Bloomberg suggested the prospect of PlayStation games running on the next Xbox, which looks like it will run PC games, may have also encouraged Sony’s return to console exclusives.

There’s no mention of Marvel’s Wolverine in the report, but given the timing of its release (it’s due out on PS5 exclusively this September), a PC launch NOW seems unlikely.

Sony has in recent years expanded PlayStation to PC, but refrained from going as far as Microsoft, which releases all its games on PC at the same time as console. Sony, however, has employed a staggered approach, releasing its single-player PlayStation games on PC after a period of console exclusivity. When it comes to live service games like Helldivers 2 it’s a different story, with Sony publishing on PC day-one — and in the case of Arrowhead’s third-person action game, to record-breaking success. Indeed, Sony-owned Bungie is about to launch live service extraction shooter Marathon across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X and S at the same time. Guerrilla’s live-service multiplayer Horizon spinoff, Hunters Gathering.

It’s worth noting recent reports that Sony may have to delay the release of the PS6 to 2028 or even 2029 as a result of the AI-fueled chip crisis. In January, an analyst report suggested that Sony may push the launch of the PS6 beyond 2028 and lengthen the PS5 lifecycle. David Gibson, senior analyst at MST international who focuses on game and tech companies, predicted that “rising memory prices will not impact short-term performance thanks to Sony’s existing inventory.” However, he noted that increased memory costs could become an issue for Sony in the next fiscal year (ending in March 2027), saying “Sony might pass future cost increases onto consumers.”

With that in mind, doubling down on PS5 as the home of exclusive games may help reinforce the console’s value for PlayStation fans, and encourage sales.

Last month Sony announced the shock closure of Bluepoint Games, the studio behind the remakes of both Shadow of the Colossus and Demon's Souls. Sony still operates PC port specialist Nixxes Software, which it bought in 2021.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Apple has kicked off a week of new product reveals, and it started with the announcement of the iPhone 17e. This is the cheapest model of the iPhone 17 lineup, as it starts at $599. That’s $200 less than the previous cheapest model, which makes it appealing to anyone who doesn’t want to spend a fortune on a new phone. And it still shares many features with the standard iPhone 17, which we recommend as the best phone for most people. It’s available for preorder now (see it at Verizon), and it releases March 11. Read on for the details.

Preorder iPhone 17e

Ever since its reveal in 2019, Pearl Abyss' Crimson Desert has garnered a certain mystique for its ambitious open world and the multitude of activities waiting to be uncovered. It's a type of open-world action-adventure that's aiming high and looking to land among other AAA games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Witcher 3. However, this mystique has also attracted some skepticism about whether the game will deliver on its vision of a grand-scale action game that pulls you into its world.

Fortunately, we recently got several hours of hands-on time with Crimson Desert, and the ambitious open-world game is well-positioned to deliver on its lofty goal of being a captivating action game. However, that skepticism from many online is still lingering, and with many games not quite hitting the mark at launch, it can be hard to shake — especially after many years since its initial reveal.

During this Crimson Desert media event, we spoke with Will Powers, director of marketing and PR for Pearl Abyss, to clear the air and discuss the game's current state. In addition to offering some frank thoughts on the nearly seven years since Crimson Desert's reveal, Powers also shared his larger hopes for what the game can accomplish as a standalone action adventure away from the shadow of Black Desert Online.

Editor's Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and readability.

IGN: The game has been on many players' minds for some time. But now that the release date is coming up, and people are learning more about the game, how has it been for you all to show more of the game and see the response from players, getting a better idea of what Crimson Desert is all about?

Will Powers: It's tough to say for sure, because, like with anything, there's a balance of making sure that the awareness is out there for Crimson Desert without over hyping or setting impossible expectations to be able to hit. That's really where you need to achieve that balance, because you don't want to let people down at launch by making them anticipate something to such a high level – like it's the second coming. So you have to strike a balance between awareness and not over-promising. This game and its heritage, both from when it was announced and from a studio that has made an MMORPG with over 55 million global players.

So that's the benchmark that this company knows. Releasing your sophomore project after that, there's probably higher internal expectations than there are external ones. But going back to your question, what's really interesting is the heritage of this game as an MMO and as a studio that knows how to make open worlds designed to serve the community. Even though this game has pivoted to a single-player open-world, those single players are benefiting from systems from when it was a different type of game, which is why many people say they haven't seen a game like this before. This isn't what this game was originally intended to be. This is an amalgamation of what it is morphed into, benefiting from where it came from.

IGN: Even though people are getting a sense of what Crimson Desert is all about, it is still a strange position to be in when you have a game that's been on the minds of many players for several years now. Has long-term attention been a hurdle to overcome, or has it added some motivation?

Will Powers: In a sense, we're kind of victims of ourselves – we announced the game too early, and, honestly, that's just inarguable [to dispute]. Things happened that way for multiple reasons; the game changed, and we built an engine, and not just for this game, but an additional engine altogether. So it's not just strictly development time for a singular title. But if we had to do it again, I don't think anyone would say we should announce the game six-and-a-half years in advance. That's just not a thing that happens often. But as a result of this situation, what happened is it created this air of mystique around it where people didn't really know what the game was, and that's become fun from my perspective.

So now we just let people play the game for hours and do hours of interviews as well. In this situation, what if we revealed six hours of gameplay footage? So then it becomes less of a question of people not knowing what the game is and more of a question of, "Well, how can this be too good to be true?" Or, "how can this not be real?" We never want to be accused of hiding anything, because we have a lot of ground to make up. We initially revealed this as something else, so we needed to do more than a game traditionally would to course-correct for our own actions from five and six years ago.

IGN: And as you mentioned, the game underwent many changes over the years — it was originally a direct prequel to Black Desert Online. Do you feel that the shift away from the direct connections to BDO helped bring the game to where it needed to be?

Will Powers: Yeah, I can only assume, since I wasn't in the room making that decision with them. Still, I can say that those types of conversations happen when the game is becoming something different from what we originally intended. At those points, there's a crossroads of sorts: "Do you want to lean into that experience of being different," or "do you want to shoehorn it back into what the original intention for the project was?"

Obviously, we chose the former of those two and let it really become its own thing. That's led to a little bit of product confusion in the marketplace, because we've announced this as a different genre and different universe through official channels, and that's changed a lot. But it's also led to some similarities with Black Desert Online, and I think one way to look at it is that this is now part of the Desert IP. What does that mean? It'll have similarities in DNA across Black Desert and Crimson Desert in terms of style and a lot of the combat DNA, regardless of the differences in genres.

IGN: On that note, I've noticed that the game's messaging defines it as not an RPG but an open-world action-adventure game. I got a sense of that from my hands-on time; there weren't any stats to look at, and it's all about the direct action. Was that direction important to help define Crimson Desert from Black Desert Online?

Will Powers: Well, there are really two parts to that. For one, we already have an RPG, and it has all the elements people want. But then there's the connotations of genre that create some expectations, but also some confusion in the marketplace for what kind of RPG it could be. Because we were changing what this game has been over the years, we didn't want to create further confusion by assigning a genre that we don't even feel is fully representative of the game.

So, to be completely honest, the most representative genre for Crimson Desert is open-world action-adventure. That carries many of the elements of combat, exploration, and storytelling that we're achieving with this game.

IGN: Looking back over the years, it's clear the game feels very much inspired by other games of this style, such as The Legend of Zelda, The Witcher, Dragon's Dogma, and Assassin's Creed. That's also created some expectations. Do you feel it was important to show that this game aims to match similar experiences while also making a stronger distinction about what Crimson Desert is trying to achieve?

Will Powers: I think that it would be arrogant of a studio to say that other games do not inspire them. That would just be pure arrogance to say that you don't take inspiration from some of the best games in the last 10 years. However, I'm at a point where I'm done comparing this game to others. We needed to do that at the beginning because we hadn't offered enough hands-on time to people. Still, I think now we're at the point where comparing it to any singular title is a misrepresentation of [Crimson Desert] because the elements that exist within it honestly transcend some of the systems in any singular game.

That's where I think it comes into its own. And sure, those similarities are still there, but I do hope this can become one of those games people look to and say, "Oh, I can't find another game like that." It remains to be seen how people will feel about the game once it's out there, and whether it's defining its own new genre or what, but in the end, those inspirations have created something special and a type of experience you can't get elsewhere.

IGN: It was surprising to see just how much detail there was in the game, and how much time I spent just exploring the towns and settings. This feels like a game that you can just vibe out with once you have unlocked a good portion of the world.

Will Powers: For me, that's one of the unique traits of this game. Oftentimes, when there's a massive game like this, I feel like, "Oh, I can't jump into it unless I have four or five hours free." I haven't felt that when playing it personally, because there are things I can do in just an hour. Like I can find mining materials to try to upgrade my weapon, or I can just set a task for myself and head out in one direction of the world, and in that time, I feel like I'm still accomplishing something grander. I think what's interesting within the world is that you're not limited by how much time you have to dedicate to this experience.

IGN: Lastly, based on your experiences with the game, do you feel there's something about Crimson Desert that you really value and that you want more people to know about?

Will Powers: Yeah, one of the guiding ideologies of the developer is that they want to create a world that is about having fun, and that's just the core of it. If you're going to make a game like this with all these different systems, then yeah, you gotta make sure it's all fun and that it ties together in a cohesive way. For me, that's resulted in really fun and cool interactions. My favorite experiences with this game come from telling people about what I've experienced. We have a room at the Pearl Abyss office with like four PCs, and every time we get a new build, we just sit down and play-test it a little bit. Every time we do that, there's like this almost offline co-op experience that happens, where I'm like, "Did you guys see this thing over here?" or, "Did you guys know about this?"

And it reminds me of when I played Fallout 4, where I was in party chat, and even though it's a single-player game, there's still a community experience. I really think Crimson Desert is going to inspire something similar, where players explore this world and share their discoveries and experiences with their friends. That communal experience is something special, and yeah, I haven't had that in a long time.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

The reveal trailer for Control Resonant, the sequel to IGN’s 2019 Game of the Year, made a few things clear right off the bat. First, we wouldn’t be playing as Jesse Faden anymore, but rather her brother, Dylan. Second, we’d no longer be confined to the Brutalist architecture of The Oldest House. Instead, we’d be trying to navigate our way through a Manhattan that had literally folded up on itself, Inception-style, as a result of The Hiss getting out. And third, Dylan isn’t wielding Jesse’s badass transforming Service Weapon, or even one similar to it. Instead, he’s got his own badass transforming weapon: the Aberrant, a massive hammer that brings combat into much closer quarters than before.

Remedy showed off a bit of proper gameplay at Sony’s recent State of Play, but I’ve had the pleasure since then of getting an extended hands-off look at more gameplay, along with learning more information from the lead gameplay designer and the creative director. What I came away with surprised me: I adored the first Control, but early indications are that I might like Resonant even more. Why? It’s not just that it’s markedly different and not just a same-y sequel, but it’s that its melee combat might scratch my Ninja Gaiden-style itch. “This is not a soulslike,” said lead gameplay designer Sergey Mohov. “It’s a push-forward, action-driven, aggressive-playstyle action game. The player is very much in charge and not [simply] reacting. The main driver of combat is you.” Tell me more, Remedy.

Buildcrafting

Remedy is calling Control Resonant an action-RPG, and while the studio confirmed there won’t be a ton of gear or inventory management – “It’s not a survival game, it’s an action game,” said creative director Mikael Kasurinen – the team did show off some of its systemic depth. For one, there are Talents, which Remedy says are “the glue that ties your weapons and combat abilities together.” One such example is Perfect Dodge, which grants you a temporary boost to your next attack if you, as the name implies, time your dodge perfectly. Others include Extended Dash (self explanatory), Backstab Damage, and Sustained Assault. Remedy also made it clear that you can’t unlock everything in a single playthrough.

You’ll also have ample opportunity to customize your build in The Gap, which functions similar to Alan Wake 2’s Mind Place. Here you can test out various abilities, earned by defeating Resonants. The Gap also allows you to tweak your Aberrant, including the primary forms, secondary forms, and combo enders. A big goal is giving players more choice with their gameplay style. Like, for instance, if you’d prefer to tailor your build to focus on turning enemies to fight on your side. Lots of stats are also exposed in The Gap if you want to min/max your build.

Less meaningful customization – meaning, the cosmetic kind rather than the gameplay kind – happens in FBC field offices. Remedy describes these as the heart of FBC activity, saying they’ll evolve over time as the Hiss crisis overtaking Manhattan deepens. As everyone there is trying to figure out how to deal with the disaster out the window, you can customize your outfit.

City Life

Out in Manhattan, which is split into several districts, aims to be visually distinct from zone to zone. Remedy wants to have more visual variety across the world. The team also knows that the map was frustrating in the first game, and so they showed off a work-in-progress version of it that clearly delineates each zone and seemed easy enough to follow along with.

But what of the markers on that map? You’ll have your choice of two major categories of quests at any given time: Dylan’s Journey (i.e. the golden path) and World Quests (aka sidequests). In addition, there are smaller action bits and tiny puzzles, seemingly akin to unmarked micro-gameplay moments. Through these you can discover both secrets and lore. “We want the world to be some place you want to return to,” Kasurinen said. In one early mission I got a brief look at, Dylan enters the Central district office of Zoe de Vera, a new character to Control who speaks to Dylan through his earpiece throughout the campaign. She also assigns him missions. She’s often found listening to music, and Remedy promises that music will play a big part in Resonant’s world-building.

A clip of a conversation between Dylan and Zoe showcased the new dialogue system, which now not only very welcomingly gives you multiple choices for every answer, but also lets you carry out these conversations while moving. Remedy’s emphasis on player-initiated action even extends to not cementing you in place during dialogue sequences, which I can appreciate. Oh, and on this note, Remedy said that while Dylan’s dialogue choices are there to give you a bit more agency over character interactions, they’re not going to meaningfully alter the story. In other words, Remedy confirmed, there won’t be multiple endings to Resonant’s story.

Fast Action

As Control Resonant is only at its alpha stage of development, I wasn’t yet able to see a continuous, uninterrupted section of gameplay. Instead, I got a look at a number of 1-2 minute gameplay clips. But once Remedy broke out the action, my eyes opened wider. Control’s melee-oriented sequel is not only faster-paced than its predecessor, it’s faster-paced than I was expecting. I was mentally prepared for a “Souls lite” experience – something akin to the Star Wars Jedi games from Respawn.

But no, in the action I saw, it’s got some lightning in its veins. I won’t call it Ninja Gaiden fast, but it’s in the Devil May Cry/Bayonetta neighborhood, for sure. Dylan was constantly jumping up, floating, attacking, dodging, strafing, performing finishing moves, and rinsing and repeating in rapid succession. And, I should add, all of this was happening with a lot of enemies surrounding Dylan at once. These are clearly not going to be one-on-one fights, which I admit is what I was expecting based on the gameplay clips teased at the end of the debut trailer.

Oh, and speaking of fights, I also got a slightly less brief look at the Dancer Resonant fight very briefly featured at the end of the State of Play gameplay trailer. It’s not enough to make any judgments on just yet – especially not without getting to play them for myself – but they’ve certainly got the potential to be memorable moments in the campaign.

Extra Info

In a Q&A session after the gameplay presentation, I learned a bit more about what Remedy has planned for this sequel. The team did preface the conversation by saying that they’d talk more about narrative and characters later in the year, closer to Resonant’s release, but for now, there are nevertheless some relevant new details to share.

First, on the technical side, Remedy has tuned its in-house game engine Northlight to enhance draw distance and support more enemies on screen at once. They also want to make sure they’re hitting a solid 60fps on all platforms.

Second, will enemies respawn? Mohov replied, “To a degree, yes, but there’s more nuance.” Apparently that nuance ties to the narrative that Remedy isn’t quite ready to dive into yet.

Next, is a fully range-based build possible? Mohov said, “The main weapon is the Aberrant and that’s Dylan’s preferred method of combat. It’s never going to be ranged-only.”

Interestingly, Kasurinen said, “Music plays a huge part. Zoe’s definitely in the middle of that, and it’s part of how they bond. We don’t want music to just be a thing you listen to. It becomes part of the overall flow. The music is part of that experience, and that’s hugely important to us, and we want to find our own way of doing it.”

As for influences on Resonant, Kasurinen acknowledged Neon Genesis Evangelion and, for the dialogue system, one of my favorite walking simulators. “Firewatch was a big inspiration for this,” he said.

Finally, as expected, you certainly do not need to have played the first Control – or the Remedy Connected Universe Alan Wake games – to enjoy the story or characters of Resonant.

How Long Must We Wait?

And with that, my very impressive demo of Control Resonant ended, and I was left wondering if there’s a chance we might be playing this sequel sooner rather than later. No, Remedy isn’t ready to reveal a release date just yet, and I’d still wager it’s going to ship in the second half of the year, but if the studio is showing off behind-closed-doors gameplay right after its first gameplay trailer, which itself came very shortly after its reveal trailer – combined with the looming meteor impact that will be Grand Theft Auto 6’s release in November – I can’t help but be left with a healthy dose of optimism that this could land closer to Control 1’s August release month than Alan Wake 2’s late October window. Is this just wishful thinking on my part? Quite possibly. And with how packed this year’s slate of big games is, I’m not sure there’s really a quiet time that any game will get all to itself. But after seeing Control Resonant’s aggressive, fast-paced combat for myself, I’m even more fired up to get my hands on it.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our semi-retired interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

Every once in a while, a particularly ambitious game comes along and immediately hooks the audience. In Crimson Desert’s case, showing a grand-scale world that recalls elements of Breath of the Wild and The Witcher 3 quickly garnered a mystique for its ridiculously over-the-top ambitions for a new open-world action game. However, since its reveal back in 2019, it's taken a long time to get a clearer picture of how the ambitions driving Crimson Desert have taken shape. And now, in 2026, it's garnered some healthy skepticism, leading many to feel it might be one of those games that's just too good to be true.

Thankfully, with the now-firm March 19 release date fast approaching, I got some extended hands-on time with developer Pearl Abyss' large-scale single-player action game. After diving into the opening hours of this grand-scale, sword-and-sorcery adventure, I got to see just how detailed and vast the world of Crimson Desert is in real-time, and what sorts of oddball quests and brutal combat encounters are to come in protagonist Kliff's adventures across Pywel.

Crimson Desert focuses on the story of wandering warrior Kliff, a member of the Greymane faction that seeks to keep the continent of Pywell safe during harsh times. But after a ruthless warlord decimates much of his crew, Kliff himself is seemingly killed in battle, but he's soon resurrected by mysterious new allies that come from the sky realm known as the Abyss. Now tasked with rebuilding the Greymanes, he'll recruit new and returning members to his cause, push the limits of his newfound powers, and directly confront a civil war and a malevolent force that's threatening the balance of the world.

Originally planned as a direct prequel to the MMORPG Black Desert Online, Crimson Desert is now a stand-alone adventure set in the same universe. Even without knowing the lore of Black Desert Online, Crimson Desert keeps connections light aside from the similar high-fantasy setting and occasional references. It totally throws itself into the style of a western high-fantasy epic, but with the added energy of an eastern-style action game in the vein of Final Fantasy. The opening chapters of Crimson Desert do well to introduce Kliff as a rugged and stoic hero who can easily cut down enemies in his path, but is also willing to lend a helping hand to the citizens across the land.

Though much of the footage we've seen showcased the grand spectacle and ludicrous action in Crimson Desert, my hands-on time largely focused on the more laid-back tutorial set in the Hernand region of Pywel. I had played Crimson Desert three times before this extended hands-on, all of which focused on isolated boss battles and spectacle combat. But with this tutorial setting the tone for the pacing and storytelling, I've now got a much better idea of the larger structure of this open-world adventure.

While Crimson Desert has gotten a ton of comparisons to The Legend of Zelda, The Witcher, and even Dragon's Dogma – one game that really came to mind during my hands-on was Red Dead Redemption 2. Despite what we've seen before about how fast you navigate the massive world, at ground level, there's a surprising focus on navigating its densely populated areas with care and attention. I spent a lot of time just wandering the back alleys, interacting with people going about their day, finding new shops and cooking recipes, and even uncovering optional activities that do a good job of making the world feel bustling and lived in.

Some of my favorite moments from the opening hours came from seeing what sorts of sidequests the townsfolk would pull me into. In one instance, I encountered a man who fell from his roof and needed help with cleaning his chimney – and that's exactly what I ended up doing for this sidequest. I actually climbed up to the roof, positioned myself on top of the chimney, and used my newly acquired broom to clear out the gunk to help the husband save the house.

Despite the tone and action being serious, I was pleased to see how much humour and quirkiness were packed into Crimson Desert’s opening hours. There are plenty of enemy bases to topple, but I also spent some time playing some back-alley games of rock, paper, scissors with the local ruffians. There's even a quest that had me rescue an abducted sheep to cheer up an upset child – and seeing a very serious Kliff engage in such activities was more amusing than I expected.

Kliff begins his journey with a fairly modest skill set and knowledge of the world, and, as in traditional open-world action games, the larger pull of Crimson Desert will be to expand his abilities and insight. When you pick up quest information, recipes, and even bounty notices for roaming targets, Kliff will expand his knowledge and fill out his records of all the wildlife, characters, and important events of the world. I was impressed to see how much was packed into this comparatively modest section of the massive game world – seriously, just looking at the map had me taken aback by just how large Pywel was.

It was interesting to take in Crimson Desert's pacing, and its deliberately detailed approach to navigating and interacting with the world initially took some time to get used to. Even as a tutorial, I was surprised to see how much time is spent on getting players to really take in the many features and opportunities to find. Granted, it is very much in the vein of Red Dead Redemption 2's movement and interaction, but I admittedly felt overwhelmed by just how much you can interact with. You can actually go up to nearly all citizens to greet them, or even rob them – provided you have a mask to disguise yourself.

Despite the range of activities, Crimson Desert is also a combat-heavy game – and even with Kliff's limited skills, the battles you can get into are quite brutal to see unfold. Initially, I started brawling with bandits and goblins around the city. Still, eventually things took a turn when rival knights and other faction leaders started looking to get a piece of Kliff. The mini-boss battle against Matthias was a particularly thrilling fight, and even as one of the early encounters, it did a good job of showing how visceral the battles can get.

Eventually, Kliff will make trips to the mythical Abyss realm, where I navigated a series of floating ruins far in the sky. Stepping into these visually stunning environments was one of my favorite moments from my hands-on time, and it also gave me a jaw-dropping view of the world's vast landscape. These are also segments that introduce the new Abyss powers in some puzzle-platforming challenges. These magic powers elevate Kliff's combat and traversal skills to use his force-style powers to manipulate objects, and use a force jump ability to propel him off the ground. Eventually, I was granted the ability to glide, and I took it out for a spin by skydiving back towards the ground. It's a fun ability to use, but it definitely takes a ton of stamina to get the most out of it.

Throughout the game, Kliff will acquire Abyss catalysts, which will serve as skill points to upgrade stats and unlock new abilities. These upgrades include improved jumping and more combat skills, such as a suplex and more advanced sword strikes. In addition to exploring towns and the surrounding wilderness, I also got to see the early goings of the Greymane faction system, which focuses on building up crew, sending them on missions, and gaining new resources. Though I wasn't able to see it evolve much, it was impressive to see that it's actually a full-fledged management system that will continue to grow as you explore the world.

I really enjoyed the flow and action in Crimson Desert, and completing the tutorial was a solid onboarding to the larger adventure ahead. Based on my previous hands-on time, Crimson Desert currently feels much more intuitive and less complicated with its controls. Still, it had the recurring issue of being too complicated for its own good, with its systems trying to cram actions and features into a fairly limited set of sub-menus and combinations. For instance, you'll often have to manually equip key items and gear to activate some prompts, which can feel cumbersome. This all ties back into the attempts to make players feel like they're having a more tangible connection to the world, but it can often feel too overcomplicated for its own good.

Along with the opening chapters, I also got a chance to get another look at the midgame of Crimson Desert, which saw a powered-up Kliff take on new enemies and a more powerful boss that matches up to his souped up skills. Moreover, Crimson Desert also includes new party members that can be swapped in if you want to try a different combat style. While Kliff is still the central protagonist, playing as the tanky berserker Oongka or the nimble and fierce Damaine offers up some fun alternatives to Kliff's playstyle. It does well to showcase the variety within Crimson Desert and how the game will ramp up with more zany encounters that blur the lines between a high-fantasy adventure and steampunk fantasy.

Even with this lengthy hands-on time, I was still only scratching the surface of the larger adventures to be had in Crimson Desert. There have been many games in the past that try to go for large open-world settings, but don't often really justify the need to go big and bold. But I was honestly quite impressed to see that Crimson Desert is not only presenting a case for its take on an open-world action-adventure game, but is also having fun with the concept by pushing its attention to detail and just how much there is to unpack within the sprawling world.

So far, Crimson Desert is showing a lot of promise. It's certainly been on the minds of many for several years now, which has invited a host of comparisons with other large-scale games. But my extended hands-on time has made me feel optimistic and intrigued by the game's maximalist action style. And that's gotten me plenty interested in seeing if the full game can deliver on reaching the same highs as other genre greats.

Jackbox Games, the game developer known for its annual party packs of phone-controlled party games that even your non-gamer friends enjoy, is lengthening its reach today with the announcement that it's going into indie publishing as well. Its first published game? My Arms Are Longer Now, from Melbourne-based Toot Games.

It's another big step for the party pack purveyor, and another indication that the company is starting to break out of its comfort zone. Speaking to CEO Mike Bilder at DICE Summit last month, he tells me that the company experienced "explosive growth" during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It wasn't just revenue: between Zoom happy hours, families playing remotely, and live streams, more and more individuals became aware of and playing Jackbox, and they largely haven't stopped. That growth has enabled Jackbox to expand beyond just making a party pack a year and calling it good. For instance, last year, Jackbox announced it would be bringing its party packs to smart TVs, offering an avenue for individuals unused to hooking up a bunch of cables just to play Fibbage in their living rooms.

And now, publishing, beginning with My Arms Are Longer Now. Andy Kniaz, VP of business development and international at Jackbox, tells me that it's a prime example of what Jackbox is looking for in games it publishes. They don't have to be party games – in fact, it's almost better if they're not, as Jackbox has that covered. But they do need to be "thematically" consistent. My Arms Are Longer now is a super silly 2D stealth game where you, an atrociously long arm (the game's store page specifically calls it "like a yucky snake") have to try and steal stuff with it. From the trailers, it looks like a weird mix of Octodad, Thank Goodness You're Here, and…Payday? Yeah, we'll go with that.

Its developer, Toot Games, has already been showing the game around at events such as PAX Australia. It's a team of developers with experience in microgames, but also background in comedy and performance. All of which makes a lot of sense if you know anything about what Jackbox does. "It's a voice," Kniaz says. "Jackbox has a voice and [we want] the people that are speaking our language basically."

So, no gritty shooters, I ask Kniaz?

"Well, so here I'm going to pitch you my headline," he replies. Okay, sure. Here's his pitch: "Jackbox Vehemently Denies the Rumors They Were Acquiring Rockstar Games to Publish a Humorous and Light-hearted Grand Theft Auto VI."

I prooooobably can't put that at the top of the article.

Kniaz says he's looking for games that are already playable - Jackbox doesn't want to fund anything from the ground up. He's looking for games where you can feel "the laughter in the room" while you play. He likes unique creative viewpoints, multiplayer games, games that mess with control schemes, and most important: games that are fun. Jackbox, in turn, will offer marketing support, some production support, QA, release management, first-party management, submissions, and other fairly typical publisher assists.

Kniaz and Bilder aren't going to "go nuts and sign ten games at once," but they are putting this news out into the world because they want developers to pitch them.

I asked Kniaz and Bilder what their five-year vision for the publishing label was.

"Well, we will have acquired Rockstar by then," says Bilder.

"GTA 6 will be coming out under Party Pack 27," Kniaz continues. "Crazy."

Kniaz then offers a serious answer:

"I think that ultimately we're getting into, people talk about 'ethical publishing.' It's a buzzword. It's just publishing ultimately. If you've sat on the side of the table with a large publisher, and I don't want to badmouth any, because there are great large publishers, but there are some that just, it's not a development deal. It's leverage. And we believe steadfastly that developers should be earning from day one. We believe that there needs to be runway after the game is launched so they can get to their next thing. If you ship a game, you don't want to go broke immediately after shipping the game. All of that's incredibly common in our industry, and I think ultimately we just want to grab great games. We want to present it to our audience and we want to build a community of fantastic developers that grow with us."

My Arms Are Longer Now is planned for release later this year.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

This is a non-spoiler review for all eight episodes of Young Sherlock's first season, which launches on March 4 on Amazon Prime Video.

Guy Ritchie, who brought his witty high-kinetic energy to two very entertaining Sherlock Holmes movies starring Robert Downey Jr., is back in the Sherlock saddle with Prime Video's caper-riffic Young Sherlock as executive producer and director. Despite wasting its episodic energies on a full season-long mystery and short-sheeting the Sherlock character a bit in the process, Young Sherlock is rambunctious fun that works well as a "Team Sherlock" adventure, bringing together a bunch of crafty, capable characters to save the world from a Victorian-era weapon of mass destruction. It may not feel like a traditional Sherlock Holmes mystery, but it does occasionally feel like Leverage with a sprinkle of Indiana Jones...and that's not a bad thing.

Serving as an origin story for the "World's Greatest Detective," Young Sherlock centers on a 19-year-old Sherlock Holmes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), presenting a unique, separate version of him that's not connected to Ritchie's RDJ films. This novice Sherlock also comes with newly-conceived family members (mom, pop, sister) and a surprising fast-friends team-up with one James Moriarty (Dónal Finn). Finn's Moriarty actually winds up being the freshest and most riveting part of the series, despite the concept of Sherlock being BFFs with his future nemesis in a quasi Professor X/Magneto way understandably eliciting some eye rolls. But more on that in a bit.

This isn't the first time the exploits of younger, teenage Sherlock have been explored, but it's rare for them to wind up on screen. The last time that happened, in fact, was a movie produced by Steven Spielberg and penned by Chris Columbus over 40 years ago, and it imagined Holmes and Watson meeting at boarding school (with Moriarty being one of the teachers). Young Sherlock is supposedly adapted from the Andrew Lane book series, though the fact that Sherlock is a different age than he is in those books, and the fact that this is an original story written for the screen, seems to suggest more of a wispy "inspired by" connection.

Ritchie and showrunner Matthew Parkhill could have gone the Holmes/Watson route again, but decided to present us with a Sherlock who – in a humbling twist – is occasionally not the smartest person in the room. Some hallmarks are there, though; he's headstrong, directionless, and acts as a perpetual pin prick to stable older brother Mycroft (Max Irons), but he's bad at fighting and his powers of deduction are at an elementary level. Young Sherlock presents our hero with a band of allies who help him sharpen his instincts and hone his fisticuffs, while the big overarching mystery acts as a close-to-home trial by fire that begins to forge Sherlock into future Holmes.

The story starts with Mycroft, who's been forced to take responsibility for Sherlock in the absence of their father, the perpetually-away Silas (Joseph Fiennes), and their institutionalized mother, Cordelia (Natascha McElhone). Mycroft springs Sherlock from jail and gets him a gig as a servant at Oxford, which is the first twist on tradition, since Sherlock is a self-taught nomad and not a brilliant student. The childhood death of their sister, Beatrice, looms like a shadow over their sibling squabbles, as the incident not only placed Cordelia in a mental hospital, but also sent Sherlock into a life of flippant rebelliousness after he was blamed by Silas for his sister's demise.

After a bit of Good Will Holmes-ing at Oxford, a James Moriarty meet-cute, and a plot to assassinate certain professors is revealed, we're off to the races. I won't dig into the vast conspiracy that gets cracked wide open in order to remain spoiler-free, but it's very much a Guy Ritchie-style conceit. In fact, even though Young Sherlock is set in a different Holmes-ian universe than 2011's Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, they share the grandeur of new science merging with world-changing weaponry and war profiteering. The villain acts as a proto-Moriarty, while young Moriarty himself acts as a proto-Watson, though with a few more devilish bells and whistles.

Young Sherlock's spin on the future detective's powers of deduction is his ability to call upon a mind palace of recollection, which can place him inside the memory of whatever he's examining. It's a version of the way RDJ is able to mentally predict fights and probabilities of success in the Ritchie movies, but used here more for crime scene analysis. It's a cool part of the premise that helps separate Sherlock from the rest of his cohorts, and Tiffin is formidable as this green version of Sherlock, but it's James Moriarty that runs off with the show. He's vulnerable, mysterious, and mischievous all at once. We don't get much insight into his backstory, except that he doesn't come from money and seems to envy/admire Sherlock's family, as f***ed up as they are. It's as if he'd give anything to be a part of something...even if that thing was broken.

Moriarty becomes the driving force for a lot of the show, and he's the one who gets Sherlock into fighting shape; he even gets to introduce the "When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains..." line. He's basically a ride-or-die pal like Jeremy Renner in The Town, who helps Ben Affleck with no questions asked ("Whose car we gonna take?"). The show takes good care of this relationship too, never steamrolling us right into dumb "they're enemies now!" territory. The rest of the cast is up to snuff as well, with Fiennes shining as a narcissist and McElhone having a nice arc as a woman reclaiming her life and family. Zine Tseng, as a Chinese princess attending Oxford, is a wonderful Irene Adler-style wild card operating mostly on her own agenda but also deeply connected to all the goings-on. Oh, and if you're keen on seeing Colin Firth as a sketchy blustering fool, then Young Sherlock's got you covered.

There's some anachronistic dialogue here and there – "Game recognizes game," etc. – and most of the time it doesn't necessarily feel like a Sherlock Holmes story, per se, but Young Sherlock's jazzed-up action and high-stakes, globetrotting, Tintin-esque escapades make for an entertaining distraction and an enjoyable new entry into the What if...? world of Holmes.